Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, Redux
[EDIT: For zyphryus' pleasure, now more boring digression on eighteenth-century British pr0n!]
Since the last update, I've finally finished Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure; the edition I have, which is the Oxford World's Classics series, is quite short, only a little under 200 pages, but it took me forever to get through it despite this.
I spoke too soon about the vanilla nature of the sex; there actually was an S&M scene, or what passed for one in the eighteenth century. At the risk of skeeving the delicate and neurasthenic among my readership, I won't go into lurid details, but let's just say that God, that must have hurt, because the implements of masochism in those days were fucking primitive. Also, there was a scene involving two of the prostitutes and the seamstress' son, which made me terribly uncomfortable (it would be considered statutory rape today).
Also also, the thing that REALLY interests me is that there is a scene wherein Fanny spies on a couple of young men having sex with each other, and is promptly shocked and appalled. Number one, this is the pot calling the kettle black, and given that Fanny engaged in sexual activity (if not outright intercourse) with Phoebe at the beginning of the book, she's really got no room to talk. Number two, it's interesting that certain kinds of activity are acceptable, even titillating, to read about, and others aren't. The ostensible reason given is that homosexual behavior drives men away from the hard-working prostitutes of eighteenth-century Britain, though I wonder also if it isn't that Cleland wasn't into hot, nasty man-on-man action (but had always wanted to see a couple of girls together).
Anyway--it's not my favorite book ever, but it did raise some interesting questions and gave me food for thought. Methinks I am teh geek.
[EDIT the SECOND: So okay, I did about fifteen minutes' worth of Wikipedia research, and it turns out there was a pirated edition of Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure in which the hot guy-on-guy scene appeared. The scholarly consensus seems to be, and I say "seems to be" because that's not my field and I'm not up on whatever raging debates are taking place among English Lit fags, that we can't be sure whether it's something Cleland actually wrote or not. "Pirated edition", of course, only means it was published illegally; we can't know whether or not additional material was added before it went to press. And it seems that there is a healthy amount of speculation that Cleland himself may have been homosexual or bisexual. Wonders never cease.]
Since the last update, I've finally finished Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure; the edition I have, which is the Oxford World's Classics series, is quite short, only a little under 200 pages, but it took me forever to get through it despite this.
I spoke too soon about the vanilla nature of the sex; there actually was an S&M scene, or what passed for one in the eighteenth century. At the risk of skeeving the delicate and neurasthenic among my readership, I won't go into lurid details, but let's just say that God, that must have hurt, because the implements of masochism in those days were fucking primitive. Also, there was a scene involving two of the prostitutes and the seamstress' son, which made me terribly uncomfortable (it would be considered statutory rape today).
Also also, the thing that REALLY interests me is that there is a scene wherein Fanny spies on a couple of young men having sex with each other, and is promptly shocked and appalled. Number one, this is the pot calling the kettle black, and given that Fanny engaged in sexual activity (if not outright intercourse) with Phoebe at the beginning of the book, she's really got no room to talk. Number two, it's interesting that certain kinds of activity are acceptable, even titillating, to read about, and others aren't. The ostensible reason given is that homosexual behavior drives men away from the hard-working prostitutes of eighteenth-century Britain, though I wonder also if it isn't that Cleland wasn't into hot, nasty man-on-man action (but had always wanted to see a couple of girls together).
Anyway--it's not my favorite book ever, but it did raise some interesting questions and gave me food for thought. Methinks I am teh geek.
[EDIT the SECOND: So okay, I did about fifteen minutes' worth of Wikipedia research, and it turns out there was a pirated edition of Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure in which the hot guy-on-guy scene appeared. The scholarly consensus seems to be, and I say "seems to be" because that's not my field and I'm not up on whatever raging debates are taking place among English Lit fags, that we can't be sure whether it's something Cleland actually wrote or not. "Pirated edition", of course, only means it was published illegally; we can't know whether or not additional material was added before it went to press. And it seems that there is a healthy amount of speculation that Cleland himself may have been homosexual or bisexual. Wonders never cease.]